The basis for stunning an 11-year-old girl is currently unknown, but the community has every right to a prompt and professional review of the facts.

Using a Taser on an 11-year-old girl accused of the nonviolent crime of shoplifting raises significant questions about police accountability for use of force. For the past 16 years, the Cincinnati community has promptly addressed these questions as they arise.

Under the Collaborative Agreement, a police use of force is investigated by Internal Affairs within the police department. It is also investigated by the professional, independent staff at the Citizen Complaint Authority of the city. The investigation must be done within 90 days. The staff report is reviewed by the citizens who sit on the board, and they make a recommendation to the police chief and city manager on discipline. The citizen and the officer are interviewed as part of the process.

This meaningful, thorough, professional review of force by the authority is a national model for citizen engagement in police accountability. It works. It is part of the commitment to transparency that we made when we negotiated the collaborative. But the entire authority process is now at risk.

Last month, a common pleas court ordered the authority not to interview any officers if those officers were likely to be witnesses in a pending criminal case against the target of the use of force. So, in this case, if the young girl is prosecuted for the misdemeanor of shoplifting, the officer cannot be interviewed until her criminal case is concluded. That is true even though assessing the propriety of the use of force is not dependent on whether she actually did take food without paying for it.

Was the use of force procedure followed?

A Taser, photographed during refresher training at the Cincinnati Police Department's Queensgate training facility in October 2009.(Photo: Enquirer file)

The issue for the authority is to determine if the Taser policy within the use of force procedure was followed. That includes a determination of whether the officer properly weighed these factors:

The severity of the crime at issue.

Whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others.

Whether the suspect is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.

Officers should attempt to achieve control through advice, delay, warnings, and/or persuasion when confronted with a situation where control is required to effect an arrest or protect the public's safety. The suspect should be allowed to submit to arrest before force is used, unless this causes unnecessary danger to the officer or others.

Officers are permitted where appropriate to use force but "Officers must avoid using unnecessary violence."

We do not know the basis for stunning this young girl. But the community has every right to a prompt and professional review of the facts. That requires an interview of the officer. Delaying that interview while the girl's shoplifting case proceeds is not fair to the community or the officer. There are many reasons that criminal cases could be delayed that have nothing to do with force used at arrest. There could be competency hearings, discovery delays, requests for postponements by the defendant, etc. Accountability for use of force should not be dependent on these issues.

The city has opposed the injunction, and collaborative party, Cincinnati Black United Front, is seeking to intervene to join in that opposition. But the party requesting the injunction is Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters. He should be encouraged to scale back his request and avoid this sweeping order by a court that undoes years of multi-party community trust building.

We doubt there is a solid basis to justify this use of a Taser, but through the collaborative we created a fair process to tackle these tough issues. Let’s make sure the Citizen Complaint Authority remains free to do its important work.

Al Gerhardstein is a Cincinnati civil rights attorney and Iris Roley is a freedom activist and officer in the Black United Front. Roley has worked with the city of Cincinnati, Fraternal Order of Police and many others to establish and implement the Collaborative Agreement. This column first appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer.